Pages

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

What I'm Going to Read/Play/Watch in 2016

Since this is the last Wednesday of 2015, I thought it would be appropriate to vary my theme a little bit and focus on my media consumption hopes for the upcoming year!

Reading
First of all, without a doubt I am definitely going to read Mrs. Dalloway. I've been a member of a Facebook-based book club, founded by one of my bookish friends, since October and Mrs. Dalloway is January's book. I've already read this one in school, but it's been ten (!!) years since I read it and I liked it enough that I would read it again anyway.

February's book is The Price of Salt, which I very much want to read. The question is whether or not I'll be able to find an English language version at the library. It's a timely read, considering a film version was released last month!

Speaking of the library, my big book goal for the year (aside from the book club) is to finish the TIME Top 100 list. For realsies. There are only 14 left. According to my GoodReads records, I read 36 books this year (probably a little more, but GoodReads is wacky when it comes to tracking re-reads), so I should be able to finish this list once and for all. The books that are left are:

An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser (though I may substitute in Sister Carrie by the same author, as I have a free copy of that on my Kindle app)

The Berlin Stories, Christopher Ishwerwood

The Day of the Locust, Nathaneal West

The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen

Falconer, John Cheever (this might be one that gets bumped off for something else, judging by the summaries I've read elsewhere)

The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowler

Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead

The Moviegoer, Walker Percy

Native Son, Richard Wright

Play it As it Lays, Joan Didion

Possession, A. S. Byatt

So hopefully they will turn up here on the blog next year!

Then I went on a WILD AND CRAZY BOOK-BUYING SPREE and came home from SF Bokhandeln (Stockholm's premiere SF/F bookstore) with a whopping two books. I know, I know, someone should stop me! But I am excited about what I picked up: Queen of Shadows and Nimona. I was not expecting Queen of Shadows to be such a door-stopper, so I doubt I'll finish it before the new year. But finish it I will!

Playing

I will definitely be playing a lot of Fallout: Lou Bega in the upcoming year, along with Fallout Shelter. Beyond that, it's hard to say. Will this be the year I woman up and beat Demon's Souls? (So I can move on to Dark Souls.) (I know that Demon's Souls and Dark Souls aren't related. Don't care. It's the principle of the thing.) My boyfriend also just bought the original Japanese Soul Calibur and Powerstone for his Dreamcast (holy shit does anyone else remember Powerstone????) so we might just spend a lot of video game time beating each other up. Virtually.

I never got around to finishing Papers, Please. And so unless I sit down and treat myself to a depressing, dystopian couple of days before the new year, I won't finish this until next year.

There is only one movie I care about seeing next year: Ghostbusters! I AM SO EXCITED I HAVE TO USE CAPS. If you're going to complain about Hollywood's endless sequels and reimaginings as opposed to new content, you have a point and I won't disagree. If you're going to whine about pandering to SJWs by making it an all-female version, I'm going to roll my eyes.

As far as television goes, I assume we can expect the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to hit the airwaves in one form or another in 2016. I have a lot of feelings about this, which are probably best saved for another post.

Otherwise, my television viewing is largely behind the times: I'll probably watch a lot of Poirot and Columbo (holy shit y'all I fucking love murder mysteries) (also David Suchet as Poirot is essentially my uncle with a smaller and more fastidiously groomed mustache, it's crazy!). Maybe we'll figure out where we left off in Red Dwarf and finish it (in time for the new series coming out!). The only contemporary show I'll be following is Steven Universe, which is clearly the best thing coming out of Cartoon Network these days.

So many people whose taste I trusted were insistent, so I couldn't resist. It takes a little while to pick up but I think the payoff is worth it. Amethyst is totally my spirit animal. There's also an incredible amount of internal consistency considering that it's a light-hearted fantasy show for kids.

Oooh, Fallout 4 GOTY edition will probably hit an affordable price at some point next year. So I'll definitely be playing that...!